


Hammered Heart

by Disworl



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Mentions of events from Hannibal the novel, Oneshot, Psychological Drama, S1 of the show blends into Red Dragon, Will Graham-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29641371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disworl/pseuds/Disworl
Summary: Steel, gunpowder, and Will Graham.
Kudos: 5
Collections: 100 Fandoms Challenge, Author's Favourites





	Hammered Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for any gun inaccuracies.

**I. The Trigger**

Six bullets exit the muzzle of Graham’s revolver to meet the Minnesota Shrike. Six bullets, and Garrett Jacob Hobbs falls to the floor, back resting against the homey wood kitchen cabinets.

It isn’t enough. Garrett Jacob Hobbs spends the last few seconds of his life whispering “See? See?” on repeat while his daughter’s blood spills out on the floor.

In the kitchen Will Graham trades shaking hands for barely maintained stillness, and it sticks around long after Dr. Lecter takes over the job of keeping Abigail Hobbs alive. Sitting in the car afterward has his sight of scenery blurred and distant in a way that has nothing to do with the flecks of blood on his glasses.

 _Garrett Jacob Hobbs knew t_ _he unreality of the people who die_ , Dr. Lecter will say later. _T_ _hey are not flesh, but light and air and color._ _Quick sounds quickly ended_ _when you change_ _them._ Later, Graham will admit that he liked killing Hobbs, and Hannibal will weave fine tapestries of God and killing and power. Neither of them needs to say the truth: that Graham knows the unreality, too.

**II. The Barrel**

.38 turns to .44, and in the end it doesn’t stop Hannibal from taking a linoleum knife and drawing a clean line from hipbone to opposite rib. In the proceeding flurry of broadcast theatre Lounds takes a real good photo of him in the hospital bed, he leaves Quantico for Marathon, Florida, and meets Molly Foster one day when one of his new dogs wanders off on the beach.

Good old Molly Foster, with her warm, fierce smile, acceptance of all of Graham’s scars, ramshackle house full of life, and first husband high school sweetheart buried under Oregon soil.

After Hannibal’s message to the tooth fairy, it’s then Molly who he has to take to the shooting range, demonstrating to her the Weaver stance with a .22 before he hands her his .44. It’s short and dense and modified like Hell and he still fears it won’t be enough.

(Years later, through the haze of cheap alcohol he will read of a once-promising young agent named Starling caught up in some bad press scandal with the Bureau. He will go on to see a paragraph about the extensive modification of Starling’s arm and give a low, dry laugh when he remembers her name from a paper slipped under his door about Hannibal’s escape, and think that a mighty storm’s just about to brew.)

He does not see Garrett Jacob Hobbs in the silhouette of the target, but he remembers it all the same, and as Molly fires and the Glaser shells fall to the floor, he knows right now that there are no forts for what he loves, in his mind or anywhere else.

**III. The Cylinder**

He rests in the moments after he finds Reba McClane outside the burning house, when he’s with Molly again. He damn well knows that they aren’t out of the weeds still, with the Oregon dead and Graham’s linoleum scar, but the present subpar is at least better than the past terrible. They’ve got the ability to push through it, even if it seems they never will.

Except, no.

What happens is that is that Graham walks out towards the dunes to catch a call from Jack Crawford and instead catches the knife of Francis Dolarhyde. He’s stuck now, knife singing through his cheek while Dolarhyde is angling to push it further – before Molly strikes him with the fishing rod. So Dolarhyde takes the knife out instead to follow her and Will just runs and runs, choking on his blood all the while.

His heart is ramming like clockwork, and eventually he stops running and falls down on a dune, and soon he hears gunshots muffled and distant, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care. He hears the voice of Hannibal Lecter there in the sand, a low soft murmur as he sinks to the man’s mahogany floor.

(Later, Crawford will tell him that the county boys found Molly in the shower, washing away the blood in her hair and on her skin. Later, Molly will tell him about using the .44 in the kitchen of their home, Dolarhyde bursting through the door, and he will know it’s all over. Later, he will keep an eye on the clock and think of all the apathy in the green machine, and even later he’ll float on alcohol with a face no-one can quite look at.)

But for now, he sits among the sand dunes underneath the thousands of stars above, and the old voice of Garrett Jacob Hobbs joins the refrain of Hannibal’s.

_See? See?_

And he does, _oh_ , he does.

**Author's Note:**

> 003/100 for the 100 Fandoms Challenge. Written for prompt 27 – fear.


End file.
